About Padstow Sea Life Safari: The Beginning
The first season back in 2009 was a big learning curve with many hurdles to overcome and lessons to learn. But Padstow Sealife Safaris pushed on – there was so much of our beautiful Cornish coastline that just wasn’t being explored mainly because people just didn’t know what was out there.
Since then we’ve grown exponentially and are still responsibly showcasing the best wildlife Cornwall has to offer. The more we grow, the more we can give back. Check out our ethos page for more on what we’re doing and what you can do to help.
About Ian
Ian grew up on fishing boats with his father and has worked on boats his whole life – from spending weeks out at sea as a fisherman, to working on Padstow’s famous speedboats – he’s done it all! He set up Padstow Sealife Safaris with his father and then took the reigns himself to grow the company into what it is today. From humble beginnings as a one boat operation, the business has gone from strength to strength with Ian working incredibly hard to grow a business that offers a high standard of boat trip in all aspects; from our boats to our crew.
Find out more about our skippers and crew who make our trips educational and super fun to boot!
Your safety and comfort are paramount to us. Learn how our boat trips are fun whilst being the safest possible.
Our boat trips operate on 11m Humber Quinquari RIBs with twin Suzuki 300bhp out board engines.
Our ethos
"Sensitive wildlife observation without disturbing natural habitats"
Wildlife is our life
Padstow Sealife Safaris is a locally owned business that aims to offer customers the chance to experience the rich and diverse marine wildlife that the North Cornish Coast has to offer in a safe and responsible manner.
Wildlife isn’t just our livelihood we really care about it. Seeing & experiencing it everyday means we know it better than anyone. Cornwall has one of the most diverse habitats and marine ecosystems in the whole of the UK. The cultural value to Cornish residents and visitors alike is colossal. They allow for climate regulation, fertiliser, pollution control, coastal protection, energy production and improving mental and physical health and well-being.
Conservation
We make sure we record all our wildlife sightings on every trip and send them to the Cornwall Wildlife Trust through their ‘ORKS’ sightings record app, who, in turn, share their records with the Seawatch Foundation; contributing towards conservation research and helping to inform policy makers. Collecting this data doesn’t only mean keeping track of the numbers but contributes to finding long term solutions to the problems our Cornish wildlife and marine life face. The Cornwall Wildlife Trust works tirelessly to protect the wildlife crucial for our ecosystem.
Many of our wildlife guides also spend the winters volunteering for the British Divers Marine Life Rescue helping to rescue and care for sick and injured seals around Cornwall during the grey seal pupping season, as well as responding to stranded whales and dolphins on our coast.
On top of that, Our head wildlife guide, Jenny, is an active member of the Seal Research Trust’s long term photo identification research; photographing the seals that we see, identifying them by their unique fur patterns and sharing this data across a network of seal ID’ers to better understand how seals use our coastal habitat and what we can to help preserve it.
Preventing plastic pollution
We are committed to helping keep our seas clean so as well as beach cleans we are also keeping an eye out for litter and ghost gear (loose fishing gear accidentally lost at sea) that we can retrieve to prevent it causing harm to wildlife.
More than 100,000 whales, dolphins, seals and turtles get caught in lost fishing nets, lines and traps every year. Because fishermen need the equipment they use to be durable ghost gear can take up to 600 year to breakdown with some ghost gear nets being as large as entire football pitches the danger to our marine life is immense. But you can help too! See some ghost gear or the beach? Pick it up (if it’s safe to do so) and don’t let it be washed back in the sea to end up around a seal’s neck or a seabird’s belly!
We are also making steps to go plastic free and have issued reusable coffee cups to all our crew and are now only using reusable water bottles. As part of the ‘Plastic Free Padstow’ movement.
Squeaky Clean
Our cleaning products are all environmentally friendly, containing no harsh chemicals. We like to keep our boats clean and because we do so many tours quite a lot of our cleaning is done on the water, the last thing we want is to pollute the ocean we love!
